Live review: Counting Crows get loose for final flight of the year at gems-filled Grove gig

[caption id="attachment_100523" align="alignnone" width="580"] Counting Crows guitarist Dan Vickrey, who also played with opening act Tender Mercies, and frontman Adam Duritz, right, at City National Grove of Anaheim. Photo: Kelly A. Swift, for the Register. Click for more.[/caption]

I've been a Counting Crows fan from the start, when 1993's auspicious debut August and Everything After yanked some of us R.E.M.-steeped collegians out of the ensuing grunge muck and put us on a path back to the Band, primo Dylan and Van Morrison, the Byrds – the folk-rock roots of what's now called Americana.

Yet I'm the first to wonder whether the Bay Area mainstay, which returned to O.C. on Sunday for a well-attended show at City National Grove of Anaheim, has had the slightest relevancy in more than a decade.

While lesser contemporaries that sprang up in their wake – chiefly Train and Matchbox Twenty – have become Grammy-grabbing commercial institutions, Adam Duritz and his evolving lineup of players (locked in place since 2005) have simply trotted along at their own pace, completely unencumbered by passing trends.

They've released remarkably little music in nearly 20 years. Just five albums of new material in all (although 2008's Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings was a double), plus a best-of, three proper live discs (including a full revision of August and Everything After last year) and, from earlier this spring, a satisfying collection of covers, most of them obscure, dubbed Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation).

At this point, the millennial generation may know them primarily for 2004's “Accidentally in Love,” an uncharacteristically giddy ditty from Shrek 2, more so than a career-making hit like “Mr. Jones.” Even Duritz's gigantic mane of dreadlocks – bushier and more mullet-like than ever, leaving him looking like some mutated spawn of Buckwheat and Groucho Marx – is far less recognizable as an emblem of quality singer-songwriter rock than it was at the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, older admirers – those boomers who initially glommed onto Counting Crows as a beacon of authenticity after enduring wave upon wave of hair-metal schlock – well, their ranks have steadily shrunk, too, as new albums have become denser.

In essence, this still-great seven-man band has developed into exactly what it always seemed destined to be when it was only a quintet: a Gen X cult favorite, one with enough lasting audience pull to keep touring midsize venues indefinitely, without requiring much fresh material to maintain interest.

Which is exactly what made this Grove gig – the group's smallest appearance in O.C. since a House of Blues Anaheim set just before 9/11 – so special: It was strictly for the faithful. The Crows continue to play as they always have, littering in deep cuts, cool covers and sly references to the music they love and that shaped them.

To hear my superfan friends tell it, Sunday's tour-ending performance was considerably looser – and better because of it – than a somewhat tenser turn they offered Saturday night at the Wiltern, where the L.A. vibe seemed to leave Duritz a tad uptight.

Here, he was endearingly shambolic as ever – making self-deprecating fun out of the fact that he often forgets the words to “A Long December” – yet still in full control of both the mercurial moment and his propensity to greatly expand pieces. A churning, dramatic “Round Here” grew epic in scope, for example, while “Rain King” came infused with a revamped, Faces-esque stop-start chorus (all the better to let those impeccable harmonies shine) plus a chunk of Elbow's “Lippy Kids” at the end for extra emotional resonance.

The woolly and wordy frontman led the band through a radically rethought set list. Half the selections in a set just shy of 20 songs were changed from Saturday to Sunday, with contoured beauties like “Recovering the Satellites,” “Colorblind” and “Miami” replacing other go-to gems like “St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream,” “Goodnight Elisabeth” and “Anna Begins.”

Some cuts shifted position. Saturday's main set ended with “December” and “Round Here”; Sunday they were moved up closer to the heart of the show, leaving room later on for a spate of rustic remakes: Gram Parsons' “Return of the Grievous Angel” kicked robustly, as did Dylan's “You Ain't Going Nowhere,” while an encore rendition of the Grateful Dead's “Friend of the Devil,” a longtime tour staple, made a welcome return.

Logically for this final set of the year, the mood on stage was noticeably playful. That feeling spread into practical jokes during the well-received first opening set, from fervent Boston rockers Mean Creek, and became warmer with the second act, Tender Mercies, a long-running but little-known San Francisco group largely composed of fellow Crows: guitarist Dan Vickrey, drummer Jim Bogios and keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, with a mandolin assist from David Bryson. (In addition to their own bits, including the original version of “Four White Stallions,” they served up a fine, straightforward take on Neil Young's “Powderfinger.”)

Yet it's Duritz around whom everything revolves; his temperament determines how gigs go down. Luckily for us, he returned to Anaheim in sharper form, his poetry more trenchant (even if “Mr. Jones” was at times indecipherable), his outlook more clear-eyed, his resolve steely yet leaving him smiling. He's rarely been so relaxed without lapsing into sloppiness, and his eternal depression seems to be at bay.

Now let's see how many more years it takes for them to make another album out of all this joy.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.